[Sreekar]

Breaking More Naan with Delhi
Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy
Karl F. Inderfurth, Professor, George Washington University
(source:Brookings.edu)

FIVE CENTURIES ago the lure of doing business in India was so strong that a generation of bold and adventurous Portuguese navigators and sailors changed the map of the world in order to get there. Vasco da Gama and his compatriots discovered the sea path around Africa just to get access to Indian spices and peppers. Half his fleet and less than half his men returned Lisbon from that first journey in 1499, but the world was transformed by the adventure. Portugal took control of the Arabian Sea from the likes of the Ottomans, creating the first modern European colonial empire with trading stations and forts from Goa to Muscat to Macau. Not only were the African continent and the Indian subcontinent opened to Europeans for the first time, but along the way an obscure Italian sea captain found America by mistake while looking in the wrong direction for a shorter way to India.

We are now at the cusp of another great Western adventure with India. Americans have become "India struck"--and we are not the only ones.

Visions of fabulous new markets for everything imaginable are again entrancing businessmen and entrepreneurs around the globe. Some of the statistics are indeed amazing. With a population of over a billion, Indians are a sixth of mankind. More than half are under 25 years of age. India has enjoyed growth rates of 9 percent and 9.4 percent in the last two fiscal years, and its economy is now the third largest in the world in terms of purchasing power parity. India has a middle class of a quarter billion people. Some five million new subscribers sign up for mobile phones every month in India today.

Moreover, the lure of the Indian marketplace is complemented by the attraction of its politics. India is the largest democracy in the world and since independence has had a history of freedom almost unique in the post-colonial world. This despite the searing impact of partition sixty years ago in which more than a million died, despite divisions along caste, ethnic, linguistic and religious lines, and despite the pressures of four wars with Pakistan. India's military has never sought political power. No two other major countries in the world are as natural partners in democracy and freedom as India and the United States. Yet for too long we were divided by the Cold War, opposing economic models and an agenda dominated by nuclear-proliferation issues. That is over.

The overwhelming bipartisan support for the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement that President Bush signed last December reflects the consensus of American foreign-policy strategists that India will be one of America's most crucial partners in the 21st century. Indeed, the current state of relations between the two countries is an example of something all too rare in U.S. foreign policy, namely "Policy Continuity" (PC). This PC agenda was elucidated by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns in April when he noted,

President Bill Clinton's efforts led to the first great opening in our relations. In 2001 President Bush launched an even more ambitious drive, culminating in impressive agreements regarding civilian nuclear power, trade, science and Agriculture with India's reformist prime minister, Manmohan Singh.

And there is every reason to believe bipartisan support for strengthening U.S.-India ties will continue into the next administration, Democratic or Republican. But as Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States, has said, "We have not reached the point where the relationship can be placed on auto-pilot. It still needs to be nurtured."

Already, the effort to finalize the nuclear deal is entering its third year, in part because of the inertia of a U.S. administration preoccupied by Iraq. Opponents in Washington and New Delhi are hoping the clock will expire on a lame-duck Bush Administration before it is able to obtain final congressional approval for the agreement. Additionally, tensions over the deadlocked world-trade negotiations are creeping into the relationship. So, the challenge for the next president is not to coast but to build on the Clinton-Bush foundation and take it to its next stage--"Policy Continuity Plus."

The Ultimate Power

India IS a decades-old nuclear power. One challenge for the United States is to see to fruition the long-held goal of bringing India closer as a partner in global efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. The U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement is an important step in that direction. That is why Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says it is "a milestone, timely for ongoing efforts to consolidate the non-proliferation regime, combat nuclear terrorism and strengthen nuclear safety."

Now that the United States has explicitly recognized India's status as a full-fledged nuclear power and is committed to a partnership in the realm of civilian nuclear energy, is there a broader nuclear agenda the United States and India could pursue?

In an important article published earlier this year, "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons", four distinguished Americans--George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn--argued that the world is entering a new nuclear era, more dangerous than before, with nuclear know-how proliferating and non-state terrorist groups seeking to obtain and use WMD. They argue that a bold new vision is needed to reverse this trend, citing two world leaders as inspiration for their declared goal of a nuclear-free world--Ronald Reagan and Rajiv Gandhi.

Both leaders shared an abhorrence of nuclear weapons; both leaders proposed their total elimination--Reagan at his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986 and Gandhi in a dramatic address to the UN in 1988.

Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn (joined by others like former U.S. strategic-arms negotiator Max Kampelman) propose a number of urgent steps that would lay the groundwork for a world free of the nuclear threat. These include U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and efforts to secure ratification by other key states, providing the highest possible standards of security for all stocks of weapons and nuclear material everywhere in the world and halting the production of fissile material for weapons globally. But, first and foremost, they say, "is intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise."

This could be the basis for a new U.S.-India nuclear partnership, if American officials avoid what Indians referred to in the past as "the three D's" of U.S. nuclear policy--dominance, discrimination and double standards. Regardless, there will be opponents of this new approach, especially from those in both countries that want to avoid any outside interference or treaty constraints on nuclear decision-making and plans. But proponents have the sound abolitionist legacy of Reagan and Gandhi to build on. The United States needs to take the lead and rededicate itself to the global nonproliferation agenda. A good start would be for the Senate to ratify the CTBT.

Hard-Power Choices

WASHINGTON AND New Delhi share a broad range of common strategic interests. We both want a south Asia that is prosperous, stable and democratic. We both want an Indian Ocean and adjacent waters that are open to trade. We both want to defeat jihadi terrorism. Deepening our ties is a natural outgrowth of our mutual needs.

Part of a PC Plus agenda involves strengthening India-U.S. military cooperation. We work together a great deal already. The U.S. Pacific Command is particularly eager to expand further naval cooperation in protecting the sea lanes of the entire Indian Ocean. The delivery of the former USS Trenton, an amphibious assault vessel, to India this year is a symbol of the new relationship at sea and will be a substantial addition to India's amphibious power-projection capability.

Now it is time to build further on this relationship. Admiral Sureesh Mehta, the chief of the Indian Naval Staff, has said he wants a blue-water Indian Navy that seeks "mutually respectful partnerships that ensure the stability of the Indian Ocean." The United States should take up this offer and expand our already significant naval exercises and planning, sharing more information on deployments and rotating responsibility for patrol duties in sensitive sea lanes. Alternating shifts would avoid any hint of spheres of influence and ensure greater capability to cooperate in times of crisis in the same patrol zones. Given finite resources in both navies, this would create a force multiplier for stability.

But some things will have to change for this key security relationship to move forward. For example, more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, India still buys 75 percent of its equipment from Russia. An Indian military still dependent on Moscow for new, more advanced systems and parts for old systems will be handicapped in its freedom of operation. No one supplier can ever be fully reliable. It is in India's self-interest to be less dependent on any one country for its weapons and spare parts. It is in America's interest for India to be more independent and more interoperable with U.S. forces.

But if India is to gain access to the full panoply of the U.S. defense establishment, the Pentagon must assume leadership on this issue. Without this, the relationship could stagnate. By designating India a major non-NATO ally, we would give the country access to additional high-tech defense sales. Pakistan received this designation two years ago. Talks to provide India with this status have been on and off for years. Washington and New Delhi should place a higher priority on achieving a breakthrough to ensure greater technology sharing as well as greater cooperative research and co-production on defense technologies.

And, as NATO is transformed from a strictly European focus to a global agenda, we should encourage a dialogue between India and the alliance. Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has traveled to east Asia to open new connections between NATO and Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Scheffer has been to Pakistan, and now the secretary-general should go to India. NATO is considering how to formalize its relationships with democracies that have substantial military capabilities. India should be in that mix as well. For India, it is a much more natural partnership with fellow democracies, unlike the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where India currently enjoys observer status. There will be resistance from some in India who still see NATO with Cold War eyes, but today a broader view of India's role in the world is ascendant in New Delhi. For NATO, it would be an alignment with a democratic country with real military capabilities. And there could be some immediate pay-offs.

India shares America's interest in a secure, stable and free Afghanistan and has provided over a half billion dollars in aid to the Karzai government. Indian troops are deployed in the southwest, protecting Indian development projects. India's leaders are rightly alarmed by the revival of the Taliban since 2005 and are concerned about Pakistan's tolerance of Taliban activity on its side of the 1,500 mile Afghanistan-Pakistan border. New Delhi would be prepared to do more for Karzai and, with U.S. leadership, NATO should reach out to India to get more help in Afghanistan. A more formal NATO-India relationship--even just more interaction between Brussels and New Delhi--would facilitate better and deeper cooperation in Kabul.

Beyond India's aid in Afghanistan, the United States and India worked together to end the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. The Maoists are now partners with Nepal's political parties in the interim government as part of the political reconciliation process. India and the United States will need to work together while this struggling democracy pursues a permanent peace. There is also much to be done jointly in trying to stabilize Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, both of which face mounting internal political difficulties.

Yet the toughest long-standing issue in South Asia remains relations with Pakistan and attempts to advance the nascent India-Pakistan dialogue. In recent years, this dialogue has produced some movement on normalization and confidence-building measures, but there has been little improvement on the Kashmir conflict--the underlying source of friction. Washington should try to quietly engage the parties to find a solution to the Kashmiri desire for greater self-rule that is consistent with Indian concerns about territorial integrity. A breakthrough on Kashmir is in the interest of all players: India, Pakistan, Kashmir and the world. It will help immeasurably in assuring Islamabad that stronger U.S.-India relations are not directed against Pakistan. This will require delicate diplomacy but could have a large potential pay-off.

It seems common sense that the United States and India, both targets of terrorist attacks, would also expand their counter-terrorism cooperation. Doing so requires increased information sharing and building tighter liaison bonds with India's intelligence and security services. Historically, we have neglected the Indian services, and for too long the CIA has been far closer to Pakistan's intelligence apparatus. That may have made sense in the Cold War but makes no sense today. It is time to develop much stronger and deeper security ties among our services and their Indian counterparts.

Softer Power Continued

ONE CHALLENGE on the PC Plus agenda is for the United States to put into practice what the Bush Administration has said is its goal: "To help India become a major power in the 21st century." This would require open and public support for India's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, working actively with India (and others) to accomplish the goal of Security Council expansion.

Even by the rules of 1945, India was a strong candidate for a seat. More than a million Indian soldiers fought with the Allies in the Second World War. In the 21st century, the case for a permanent Indian place at the table is even more persuasive given India's thriving democracy, billion-plus population, expanding economy and long-standing contributions to UN peacekeeping.

Last year, India and three other leading aspirants for a permanent seat (Brazil, Germany and Japan) dropped their demand for veto power--what some had seen as the thorniest problem in contemplating an expansion of the council. That step could be the one that ultimately unlocks the door. But for India to have a realistic chance of gaining permanent membership, the United States will have to take a proactive leadership role in promoting Security Council expansion and reform, something it has failed to do to date.

Yet seeing India take its place on an expanded Security Council is not enough to consolidate the PC Plus agenda. The strategic relationship needs the ballast of economic interaction, or it will be too easily subject to the whims of domestic political changes or policy differences that arise, which they surely will (such as Washington's current effort to isolate Tehran and New Delhi's determination to remain engaged with the Islamic Republic).

While trade in goods and services between the United States and India has been expanding--bilateral trade is growing by over 20 percent per year--India ranked only 19th last year among U.S. trading partners, well below potential capacity. Two-way trade came to about $32 billion. By contrast, U.S.-China trade was ten times that amount. Clearly, there is room for significant expansion. Foreign direct investment tells the same story. While the United States is India's leading investor, the amount totals a mere $6 billion. Again, China far surpasses India as a favored American destination.

However, India is beginning to attract more foreign investment, up to $16 billion in the most recent financial year, a threefold increase over 2005, with a goal of $25 billion. The government also announced new initiatives to attract much needed foreign investment for infrastructure projects, critical to India's high rate of economic growth. Citigroup and Blackstone responded by launching a $5 billion fund for this purpose.

In addition to generating greater investment, U.S. and Indian officials have set a goal of doubling bilateral trade over the next three years. That would be a plus, but both sides need to think bigger--a free-trade agreement (FTA), for instance. The U.S.-India Business Council is currently developing a "road map" to enhance trade and investment, beginning with the hoped-for successful conclusion of the Doha Trade Round and leading eventually to an FTA--potentially the largest ever negotiated. This won't be easy given the many interest groups that are hostile to open markets, the politics of outsourcing in America and the daunting labor and environmental challenges posed by India. Moreover, FTAs aren't exactly in vogue on Capitol Hill these days. It will require sustained presidential leadership and a bipartisan commitment in Congress to see this effort through to the end.

There are also promising PC Plus opportunities in the field of education. The close political and economic ties defining the "special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom have long been nurtured by academic exchanges between the two countries. These enduring "ties that bind" should now define U.S.-India relations as well.

For the past several years, India has sent more students--undergraduate and graduate--to the United States than any other country, averaging about 80,000 a year. But this has not been a two-way street. The number of American students attending Indian universities last year was around 1,800--although that was a 50 percent increase over the previous year.

India has taken an important step toward opening up its educational sector to greater participation by foreign institutions. The benefits of a focus on higher-education interaction with the United States are many: increasing the quality of its educational opportunities, retaining good talent within the country and reaping the benefits of foreign investment. For the United States, there will be greater opportunities for exchanges across cultures and disciplines and the ability to work more closely in fields of increasing importance to both countries, including science, public health and information technology (IT). IT, as is well known, has been the jewel of India's higher-education system, led by the highly competitive and world-famous Indian Institutes of Technology. We would be foolhardy not to take advantage of exchanges in this field.

Recently, a State Department-led delegation of presidents of major American universities visited New Delhi and Mumbai to promote this budding educational collaboration involving students, scholars and researchers. The stage is set for the next administration to make this a special focus. PC Plus opportunities abound.

Power Triangles

EVEN IN light of so many positives, the much-improved U.S.-India relationship has created questions about the underlying motivations for this new direction in American foreign policy--specifically whether it represents a hedge by Washington against a rising China.

Indeed, there are geopolitical thinkers in each capital who seek improved relations to balance against a third party. Some in Beijing and New Delhi see strengthened China-India ties as a constraint on American hegemony. Others in Washington and New Delhi are suspicious of China and seek to build U.S.-India relations as a strategic counterweight to growing Chinese power. While a strong India will certainly prevent the overwhelming dominance of any one power in Asia, these manipulative temptations should be resisted.

Strengthened U.S. ties with India have their own strategic logic and imperatives and should not be part of a containment strategy directed at China--something Indian officials would oppose. The task for all three is to manage ties as a cooperative, not a competitive, triangle. One key is transparency in the relationship, articulating publicly and privately the nature of the new relationship with India.

The next administration could institutionalize a closer, cooperative relationship between the United States (and the leading industrialized nations) and India and China by making these two rising global powers formal members of an expanded Group of Eight. As former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke recently said: "G-8 communiques on energy, climate change, AIDS, Africa and poverty will remain empty and meaningless without China and India."

Certainly, this is the case when looking at energy security. The United States and China are the world's two largest importers of energy. India is the world's sixth largest consumer of energy resources. With plenty of domestic coal reserves but not enough oil and gas, India and China are increasingly looking abroad to meet energy shortfalls. With the possibility of an energy competition looming, the two countries signed an agreement in Beijing last year to promote collaboration between Chinese and Indian enterprises, including joint exploration and development of hydrocarbon resources in third countries. The United States and India launched their own energy dialogue in May 2005, and an Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate has been formed with the United States, India and China--plus Australia, Japan and South Korea--to improve energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The way is already being paved for enhanced cooperation.

Sail Forth

MORE THAN 500 years ago, the promise of India and its riches lured Vasco da Gama and other Portuguese adventurers to set sail on a voyage of discovery. The world was transformed.

Today, the National Intelligence Council foresees that we are on the cusp of another major shift in World Affairs. In its 2004 report entitled "Mapping the Global Future", it noted that the emergence of India and China as new major global powers "will transform the geopolitical landscape in the early 21st century."

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush recognized this fundamental change was under way and acted accordingly, establishing a strong foundation for a vibrant U.S.-India relationship for the years ahead. In doing so, they were following the advice offered by then--Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee when President Clinton appeared before a joint session of the Indian Parliament in March 2000. Vajpayee drew upon the mariners' theme of adventure and discovery when he said:

Mr. President, your visit marks the beginning of a new voyage in the new century by two countries which have all the potential to become natural allies. In this context, we can do no better than to recall to ourselves the stirring words of the great American poet, Walt Whitman.... Whitman, in his long and admiring poem on India ["Passage to India"] called upon our two peoples to: "Sail forth--steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go."

The next American president should heed this wise counsel as well.

Karl F. Inderfurth is the John O. Rankin Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He served as assistant secretary for South Asian Affairs at the State Department from 1997-2001.
Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He served as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council from 1997-2002.

Thanks much,
Sreekar
BanChildLabour

[viking004]

we have more than 80 crore people living at below 20 rupees per day which is 3 times of the total population of the US,
WHAT A NATURAL ALLY WE ARE FOR US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!